Since their introduction, the capabilities and the number of services and features for wireless mobile phones (also referred to as cellular telephones) have steadily increased while the cost of ownership and operation has decreased. At first, these wireless mobile phones (WMP) operated on analog wireless networks that enabled voice communication and simple paging features. Later, digital wireless networks were introduced for WMP to provide more advanced features for voice and data communication, such as encryption, caller identification, and transmitting and receiving email and short message service (SMS) text messages.
Some WMP also incorporate many of the features originally provided for in handheld electronic devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs). Relatively simple PDA features such as keeping a list of contacts, a calendar, appointments, and the like have been generally integrated into recent cellular telephone models, blurring the distinction between WMP and PDAs.
User interfaces for wireless mobile devices are inherently limited by the size of the devices, often times using a standard 12-key keypad and/or a touch pad in conjunction with a fairly small display. These interfaces are often menu driven. Typical top menu items include “messages”, “call log”, “profile”, “sefting”, and so forth. Each of the top menu items may include one or more layers of sub-menu items. For example, sub-menu items under “messages” may include “voice mails”, “text messages”, “emails,” and so forth. Sub-menus under “text messages” or “email” may include an “inbox” and an “outbox.” At each menu level, menu items are often navigated in a predetermined round robin order. From a sub-menu level, a user often has to back track one or more levels before being able to navigate into another sub-menu.
With these kinds of typical interfaces, a user typically has to navigate in and out, and back and forth among many menus and sub-menus, due to the variety of communication services available, and the different formats the various come in.